A Brief History of Earth
by JH Sounds
Summary: Years before a certain blue-green planet is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, an entire company’s staff is sampled, then cloned for later use in a planet locked off in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.
1. Default Chapter

**A BRIEF HISTORY OF EARTH**

_Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material._

**1. Default Chapter.**

A small steamed up window slit was all I could see before me. I could hear my own breathing and feel my own heart beat inside the steel pod. I wondered why I was here. Actually, I knew why I was _logically _here, but the exact details of the events had escaped me.

I was once the major head in advertising for a corporation that had named itself Ab-Sorbo, after the two founders -- Don Abbott and Neil Sorbo. As it turned out, the title was well suited to the company, as their most popular product (which was available in many fruit varieties) was underarm deodorant.

Even before the disaster (which I'll get to in a moment), our product did immensely well. So well in fact, that we became the second largest distributor in the world. We were practically a pop icon, in fact. Then of course, there was the disaster.

The building I worked in, which was called _Pineapple Deodorant Tower_ (named after our famous signature product), detonated one Friday morning. The temperature was moderate, with low humidity throughout the evening.

That's when I woke up in a pod that hadn't been too dissimilar from the one I was standing in now. The obvious difference between the two happened to be that this one was heated and provided halfway-decent mood music.

Later on, the P.D. staff met together and we discussed our predicament. We were now exact replicants of ourselves, designed with the sole purpose of continuing the Ab-Sorbo brand. Our product would make a big comeback, though not as a roll-on deodorizer. It fact, deodorizing had become obsolete with the invention of DNA re-sequensing, which had eliminated the "stank" gene.

Not too soon after that meeting, I recalled that I was reclining on a bench in Collon Memorial Park. It was then that a man with a scar on his face came up to me and notified that I was going to die soon. This failed to surprise me, since I had died once before, and was now a clone of myself. But the reason I was going to die, as it turned out, had to do with the fact that I _was_ a clone. I suppose this is all getting a bit complicated, and I'm still trying to piece it all together myself, so bear with me.

Back to the setup: The man with the scar informed me of something I was already well aware of -- that I was going to expire within minutes. But, I thought, I might as well enjoy the whole thing without worrying about it too much.

So I exploded.

The next thing I could see was the front of the pod I was now in. The heavy door opened, and a middle-aged man wearing a labcoat with a terrible ink stain on the pocket stood before me.

"Welcome back," he said, scratching at what looked like the beginnings of a beard. "Get dressed in there." He pointed at a foreign-looking hallway.

Then I looked down and realized I was totally and utterly in the nude. Covering my genitalia, I pushed back my hair with my free hand and asked, "Where am I, exactly?"

The man huffed audibly. "Why do they all ask that?" he muttered to himself.

"Because they really want to know?" I suggested, now feeling the strongest urge to block my backside as well.

"Just go!" he spat, handing me a sealed packet with the word STERILIZED imprinted across the top in small, unfriendly letters.

As I entered the dressing room, I tore open the package. The clothing I was wearing on that fateful day in the park suddenly sprang out, plopping onto the floor. Not wanting to stay naked, I put them on and got out.

"This way," spoke a slender man in a bright yellow suit that was not unlike the ones that haz-mat officers donned. This worried me, as I wasn't wearing anything that would protect me from whatever he was afraid of getting affected by. "Excuse me," I asked. "What exactly are you defending yourself against with that get-up?"

He paused briefly. "What do you mean?"

I explained, "You're obviously wearing that in precaution... for what danger?"

"That danger would be you," he stated. He pointed down the hall. "Come with me, please."

"But wait, wait!" I reasoned. "What's so dangerous about me?"

"You are a human," he said. "I haven't done the proper research on your species yet. I've been meaning to, though."

"Oh, come on!" I said. "What am I, radioactive?"

"Actually, yes," said the man. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. "According to this, you exploded due to a sub-molecular reaction triggered by a redundance in your nucleic structure. The scientific method used in creating you was obviously very primitive." He placed the card back into his suit. "You could go off like a firecraker any minute."

My eyes popped. "Who are you?" I asked, stunned.

He could tell that the discussion was going nowhere, and so he removed his helmet. "You can call me Ford Anglia." He sighed. "It's a working title. Just trying it on to see how it fits."

After putting his helmet back on, Ford escorted me to a room filled with familiar faces, torsos, arms and legs. The tallest of them spoke up. "Dave!" The man ran up to me and gave me a hug. "Dave Grooming! How are you?"

This put me in a bit of a shock, as the man was the CEO of Ab-Sorbo, and we never so much as shook hands before this. "I--I'm fine, thank you." I wriggled out of his grip. "Er... so how's things?"

He rubbed the bald spot at the back of his head. "Okay, I guess. You know, this is getting to be a bit of a pain, having P.D. Tower bombed twice and cloning us back both times. I'm sick of it."

"Ah," I said. "But who wants to die?"

"I'd rather die than spend an eternity being killed and recreated over and over." Pathetic tears began to form under his eyes. "My soul feels so empty."

I tried to lighten up the mood. "Hey, hey. Look, _my_ soles are quite full!" I lifted up one of my shoes. "See?"

The CEO yowled in anguish and walked off to the other end of the room.

I have to admit, it _was_ a crummy joke.


	2. Chapter Two

**2. Chapter Two.**

At this point I'd like to tell you of my condition. It's what they call _Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder_. Or, as many sufferers have referred to it, _Look, It's a Bird on Fire_. But a condition by any other name is still as crippling.

I was led by Ford into a largish, darkened room with a bearded man seated behind a desk. His suit was a sort of purplish-pinky-green affair with a giant square tile hanging from his neck, which I supposed was a tie. "Go on, sit," he spoke with a faint smile.

"I think I'll stand," I said.

"Well, suit yourself." He tapped a pile of papers on the edge of the desk. Not that he had to, but the man apparently liked the sound it made. "My name is Troy Halfrunt," he began. "I am the Psychological examiner for this experiment. You and the rest of your kind were discovered on an uncharted planet in an unnamed solar system powered by a star I simply cannot remember."

"You mean Earth," I asked.

"No," said Ford, interjecting. "Not earth."

"You see," resumed Troy, "That planet was surrounded by celestial gases that absorbed all light that fell within its surface, rendering it virtually imperceptible until now. Since discovering it, there were elite groups that have taken great interest in your company's product."

"You mean Pineapple Deodorant?"

"Yes." He stroked his beard. "It can be quite useful in the hands of a toxins expert."

"Oh," I said. "But we on Earth--"

"You were not on Earth," Ford interrupted.

"Er, yes, excuse me -- we on the _planet_ were already aware of its use as a poison."

"_Please_," said Troy, bemused. "You and you race couldn't possibly comprehend the full and awesome power of your product. I admit, your planet is quite advanced, especially when you consider the primates that walk across it every day."

I wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or not, so I didn't.

He reached into a drawer and pulled out what looked like an small MP3 player. "Take this, for example. Significant achievements in both memory storage and compact design. But for what use?" He pressed a button, and "Tub Thumping" began to play.

I felt the inexplicable urge to perform a small jig to the beat of the music.

Ford stared.

I stopped.

"We were very short on time," Troy continued, "so instead of going around setting up the proper paperwork for transplantation of your staff, we simply waited for the inevitable."

"Er, the explosion while I was on the planet?"

"You were never _on_ the planet," said Ford, "nor any other except this one, but yes, the explosion."

"Quite right," said Troy. "As I was saying, we took the samples we needed from the resulting carnage and -- guava!"

"Guava?" I asked. "Are you sure you don't mean 'voila'?"

Troy furrowed his brow. "I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"It's an expression from Earth."

"No," said Ford, "not earth." He suddenly slapped his forehead. "That's it! That's what we'll call the planet when we revise the _Guide_. Not-Earth!"

"Why can't we just call it Earth?" I asked.

"Because people wouldn't be able to tell the two apart, you zarking lunatic!"

"You mean there's _two_ Earths?"

"No!" said Ford. "There's only _one_! That's what I've been _trying_ to _tell_ you!" Spit flew out of his mouth.

The saliva formed a spinning dumbell-like mass of translucent fluid, twirling across the room as time slowed to a crawl. At the far wall, a clock was halfway through a tick, and it was taking forever to get there. A dog barked. Then the spit landed right in Troy Halfrunt's beard.

"Oh, my word!" said Ford, rushing toward the psychological examiner with a towel to wipe up the mess. "Am I ever so sorry!"

Troy snickered. "Such a crude and belligerent race," he said, finding it difficult to speak with Ford working at his jaw. "In all my years of examining, I have never seen before--" his beard tugged downward-- "a species more deserving of complete and total annihilation by, perhaps, their local star going nova."

I gasped. "That's a terrible thing to say!"

"Is it terrible to state future events on your planet?" asked Ford, still mopping up the goo.

"Excuse me?" I asked.

"Future events?" said the field researcher, trying to explain. "You know, things that are about to happen?"

"You mean Ear-- I mean, Not-Earth is going to be destroyed?"

"Heh," said Troy. "The monkey figured it out."

I sat down, then got up again for effect. "I'm a human man!" I shouted for no particular reason other than to embarrass myself. "I deserve respect!"

"I'll tell you who deserves respect," said Ford. "The lawyers who reserved the right to destroy that planet and its inhabitants. I'm sure that was quite an ordeal."

"Lawyers?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," said Troy. "They work for an famous rock group whose signature has to do with the decimation of a sun during a live performance. I don't particularly see what all the fuss was about."

Ford let go of Halfrunt's beard. "They were pretty hoopy froods in their day, but their new album is rubbish."

My cheeks burned red. "May I ask what the point of bringing me to your office was in the first place?"

Troy suddenly remembered the stack of pages he was holding. "Oh, yes. You see these papers? They are a list of new names for your company's product."

"Huh?" I asked. "What wrong with Pineapple Deodorant?"

Ford laughed. "We can't possibly call it that! Why, on this planet, it's like calling your best friend a red-eyed leapfrog."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Doesn't seem so bad, really."

"Yeah?" said Ford. "Just wait until someone says that to _your_ best friend."

"I don't understand," I said, trying to get to the point. "I was responsible for advertising, not product naming."

"Actually," said Troy, "you're both, now. We didn't really have the time to clone your staff individually, so we just combined aspects two or three persons into each body."

"I don't..." I pondered. "You mean my DNA is a mixture of more than one staff member?"

"Yes," said Troy. "We also did that to the CEO, who is also the secretary."

I suddenly remembered the CEO's overly emotional state earlier on. "So... he's also Mrs. Woolworth?"

"Catches on quick, this one," said Ford, shaking his head.

"Wait a minute," I said. "You're telling me that I'm both Dave Grooming, head in charge of advertising, _and_ Gregory Gaspare, title consultant?"

"With a little Kent Rosenberg in there to boot," added Troy.

Both Ford and Troy shared a laugh.

My face abruptly found itself falling into my hands. I could tell this was going to be the beginning of a most horrible existence.


End file.
